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Intel talks Penryn, Nehalem at IDF

Intel's Paul Otellini took the stage today at the Intel Developer Forum to …

Intel's Paul Otellini took the stage today at the Intel Developer Forum to tout the company's next two 45nm processor designs, codenamed Penryn and Nehalem.

Penryn in November

On the Penryn front, Intel is promising 15 new 45nm products by the end of this year and another 20 in the first quarter of 2008. At least nine of those new products will be a slate of Xeon dual-socket parts set for release on November 12. The 1333MHz FSB Xeons will start at $209 and 2GHz on the bottom and go up to $1,172 on the top (80W and 120W TDP, respectively), while the two 1600MHz variants will clock in at 2.8GHz for $797 and 3.0GHz for $958.

Intel claims that Penryn will offer a 20 percent performance boost over the current 65nm products within the same thermal envelope. This performance boost will come courtesy of a number of microarchitectural enhancements (described previously) and the inevitable clockspeed bumps.

Also on tap for sometime next year is the "Silverthorne" 45nm mobile processor. Silverthorne will be aimed at ultramobile PCs (UMPCs), a form factor that looks sexy enough but has yet to really take off. I think part of the problem with UMPCs is Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to make a mobile version of Windows that's bearable to use. So we'll have to see what Apple and the Linux crowd can come up with for this form factor. One thing's for sure—Silverthorne will help bring bring real x86 laptop power down to pocket size for the first time, so if the software can catch up, 2008 should be a great year for gadget freaks.

Moving up on the size ladder a notch, Otellini referenced Intel's Montevina platform. Montevina will debut in the first half of 2008 as the successor to the recently launched Santa Rosa platform. Aside from the newly announced 25W Penryn that will form the heart of the platform, Montevina's most talked-about feature is undoubtedly its WiMAX support. With Sprint hard at work on a WiMAX rollout here in Chicago by year end, I look forward to putting Montevina through its paces from a café somewhere in the city.

Note that AMD's Griffin and Puma combo, which I've previously covered in detail in a technical article, will face off against Montevina when it launches.

Nehalem next year, and 32nm in 2009

Otellini also talked briefly about Intel's forthcoming 45nm part, Nehalem. If Penryn is the 45nm "tock" to Conroe's 65nm "tick," then Nehalem is the next "tick" in the cycle. Or, if the reference to Intel's "tick-tock" strategy is too confusing, just think of it this way: Penryn is a process shrink of the 65nm Conroe design with minor improvements, but Nehalem is a whole new ballgame.

Nehalem will be designed from the ground up for Intel's 45nm process, and it will eventually carry the line into the 32nm realm in 2009. Otellini stated that Nehalem is still on track for the second half of next year. Intel had a fully functional Nehalem demo box on-hand for the show, but they apparently turned it off and wouldn't let anyone fool around with it after the presentation.

Otellini also insisted that the 32nm transition is still on target for 2009, and to prove it he showed off the world's first 32nm test wafer containing some logic circuitry and SRAM cells.

Intel and AMD trade press releases, barbs

AMD has been working to counter Intel's IDF announcements with a combination of product announcements and YouTube videos. Monday's tri-core announcement was the first counter-punch in the PR battle, and today the company has been mailing around two videos: one on AMD's quad-core architecture and another on the triple-core processor.

Speaking of the triple-core announcement, Intel's Otellini got off a shot at AMD by responding to the Inquirer's query about whether Intel would ever consider making a triple-core part with this zinger: "We see a distinctive advantage in having all the cores on one die work."